HIPPIAS OF ELIS

This article appears in Volume V13, Page 517 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HIG-HOR

HIPPIAS OF ELIS , Greek sophist, was born about the middle of the 5th

century

CENTURY (from Lat. centuria, a division of a hundred men)

B.C. and was thus a younger contemporary of Protagoras and Socrates. He was a man of

great

GREAT

versatility and won the respect of his fellow-citizens to such an extent that he was sent to various towns on important embassies. At Athens he made the acquaintance of Socrates and other leading thinkers. With an assurance characteristic of the later sophists, he claimed to be regarded as an authority on all subjects, and lectured, at all events with

financial

FINANCIAL

success, on poetry, grammar, history, politics, archaeology, mathematics and astronomy. He boasted that he was more popular than Protagoras, and was prepared at any moment to deliver an extempore address on any subject to the assembly at Olympia. Of his ability there is no question, but it is equally certain that he was superficial. His aim was not to give knowledge, but to provide his pupils with the weapons of argument, to make them fertile in discussion on all subjects alike. It is said that he boasted of wearing nothing which he had not made with his own hands. Plato's two dialogues, the Hip pias major and

minor

, contain an expose of his methods, exaggerated no doubt for purposes of argument but written with full knowledge of the man and the class which he represented. Ast denies their authenticity, but they must have been written by a contemporary writer (as they are mentioned in the literature of the 4th

century

CENTURY (from Lat. centuria, a division of a hundred men)

),.and undoubtedlyrepresent the attitude of serious thinkers to the growing influence of the professional Sophists. There is, however, no question that Hippias did a real service to Greek literature by insisting on the meaning of words, the value of

rhythm

RHYTHM (Greek pvBµds, from bap, to flow)

and literary style. He is credited with an excellent

work

WORK

Homer

HOMER,
WINSLOW
- WINSLOW, EDWARD (1595-1655)
(1836-191o)

, collections of Greek and foreign literature, and archaeological

treatises

TREATISES

, but nothing remains except the barest notes. He forms the connecting link between the first

great

GREAT

sophists, Protagoras and Prodicus, and the innumerable eristics who brought their name into disrepute.
For the general atmosphere in which Hippias moved see SopxlsTs; also histories of Philosophy (e.g. Windelband, Eng. trans. by Tufts, pt. 1, c. 2, 7 and 8).

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